Pain into Ritual as a Turning point

If there’s to be a crucial Turning Point in the Heart-drama, if we are not just playing with a detour that returns us to the well-worn spot where we started, then we will need to embrace some daily rituals. The heart of any action we take is to convey our intention to move from captivity to release. This requires feeling the cage and then taking one small step toward the energies and states of true freedom.

We invite modes of attention that see a fuller landscape, recognizing our uniqueness and preciousness, but includes the wider reality and complexity. If we are not just re-embracing Self-deception, we must be able to name what has impacted us, the brutality and induced Pain, understand the survival “solutions” required at that time, which have become Barriers, and realize how this resulted in a profound distortion of life. Our mind will attempt to contain and make sense, trimming away what does not fit. Thus, only our Heart energized in Inspiration can direct us now.

We are not committing to a practice of retraumatizing ourselves, inviting dissociation and/or further desensitization to our own suffering. Pain into Ritual is not a form of flooding nor exposure therapy. The goal is to stay present and consciously remove the Barriers that have kept us from healing and growing. Take time. Resist the seductions of old patterns, to play defensively, to embrace the ancient self-loathing with more fervency, or to strive to gain self-acceptance by busyness, or to work for dominance or to invite cruelty.

Admittedly in our Name Brand quick fix society, it can appear to be a long and slow drama of reflection before we unveil a resolution that is right for us. The Upside-down and Inside-out will tell us to make some behavioral changes so we can make quick progress or to just accept the diagnosis and take a medication, or just trust the expert’s infantilization, and the opinions of the collective. In contrast, Pain into Ritual directs us to what is powerful enough to alter a Fallen perception. Since Loving-playfulness, Loving-work, Powerful-work and Powerful-play have an energy that allows healing and growth, these are the only forces that can accurately illuminate a way from our Fallen place and toward a different terrain, where the appearance becomes reconnected to the deepest, intimate life within us, where we can better integrate what has been fragmented in the Upside-down and the Inside-out.

Pain into Ritual—Recalling

It’s not society that’s to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so everyone of us shares the supreme ordeal—carries the cross of the redeemer—not in the bright moments of his tribes great victories, but in the silence of his personal despair.  

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The three sisters have been brought in as witnesses and interrupters of sorrow. In a dark night, whatever we invite, we want to name, to remember and to honor. Intuit what will be helpful. That said, I find the most effective energies are a version of the Awakened Child who remains open, spontaneous, and vulnerable, the Artist who unapologetically feels and brings creations to life, the Lover who embraces, supports, and protects the wounded.

Since forgiveness is ultimately the prerogative of the Visionary, you might want to be strategic about bringing in Sacred Perception until it is time to entertain mercy for a perpetrator and forgiveness for anyone else but your wounded self.

Why this painting?

We are deliberately returning to an “origin” of our woundedness, deliberately with the determined goal of disrupting and changing the way it’s remembered and embodied. But Heart-drama itself is not a form of flooding or exposure therapy; the goal is to keep us in the room—present on the imaginative stage—rather than to become dissociated from, or avoidant of, or desensitized to, the Pain.

To stay aware, we need to Recall Mindfulness, Flow, Attunement and/or Spiritual Perception, since these are states of the Inspired Self, represented and personified by the sisters. These are powers which we will allow us to see Beauty and Truth enough to refute the lies of the trauma narrative.

As you will remember, Dual Awareness keeps us here and there (co-consciousness), maintaining our feet in the present even as we journey into the trance of the past. Don’t underestimate the difficulty of this. Heart-dramas are seductive and can lure us hastily into overwhelm where we can be “stuck,” unable to access anything but what is terrifying. We need to move at a measured pace so that we don’t get lost and lose the present moment. But this is a balance, because we don’t want to pull out of the experience entirely, dampening the fire.

To stay emotionally regulated, we are wise to identify and access powers we can take with us on this journey, before we get too far in our exploration of the surplus.

Carol Forgash, in Healing the Heart of Trauma and Dissociation with EMDR and Ego State Therapy, calls this “front-loading” and suggests, as do most therapists who work with severely traumatized individuals, that the more “resourcing” you do at the start, the less de-stabilizing the Work becomes. ^[ii] In this author’s approach, such “resourcing” involves identifying capacities, abilities, traits that you can access in the unfolding drama.

Inside Out:

            I believe Recalling is the more descriptive word than resourcing.

The goal of Recalling is to remind us of the Inspired Self to provide a counter to traumatic overwhelm and avoidance. To be clear, Recalling is not backing away, ending tension and putting us back in our analytic mind, because that will in fact reinforce detachment and amplify fears. We seek to stay warmed-up, animated with emotional charge, as we introduce a powerful companion who can ground us when we need it.

Have you experienced something like the following:

• Awe. The force of an ocean slamming into a rocky shore, tossing up cold sprays that soak our skin, feeling the immensity and the wonder in such a landscape . . . Recalling brings forth implicit and explicit aspects of memory: the visual, the sensual, the thoughts of it, the emotional responses, grounded in the grandeur of Nature. Purely inventing such a moment might be helpful in other circumstances, but we need to draw on something we have experienced, real, potent, visceral, robust.

• Love. A wife discerns her husband’s family of origin without his loyalty issues, so she can name a family member’s abusive manipulations clearly. Because they love and trust each other, the wife can sometimes be an attuned truth-teller. She points out what the husband cannot see from the distortion of his triggered state, and she so opens a doorway into his own unbiased Truth (which he must then describe in his own terms).

• Safety. You may already have a safe place visual that recalls being balanced, at peace and stable. If you have had EMDR therapy, then this will be familiar. Safe places will differ from one person to the next, and often may be counter-intuitive to others. Being at the bottom of the ocean in a bubble can be soothing for one person but would only bring fears of suffocating for another. The visual of flying over the landscape could raise a sense of freedom and flexibility for one individual while for another this would only trigger the terror of heights or loss of control.

• Courage. Standing at the mouth of an ancient cave with long feared monsters deep in the shadows, one young woman described herself as the Hobbit needing Gandalf. In this way she recalled her lonely childhood where she found magic and sustenance in fantasy books. She accessed her Inspired vision when she role-reversed and fully embodying the wizard with the power to demand of her demons, “Thou shalt not pass!” This need not be so dramatic but expect the idiosyncratic.

When we Recall, only we will know what is sufficient: a loving grandmother, a wise mentor or college teacher, a childhood animal companion or some more surprising representation. No one else can tell us what we need to introduce to stay regulated.

Upside down:

Only share your deepest Work with those who will encounter your vulnerability with loving-kindness. Anticipate external resistance. Expect skepticism, cleverness, sarcasm.

Many will believe they are helping by giving “constructive criticism.” Unfortunately, in practice that is not constructive, and it means they will fault-find. They may tell you that your exploration is a fool’s errand. Unnecessary. Something best left to an expert.

They may communicate that you need to be medicated. Maybe you are crazy, though they may not say that exactly. Maybe you are Depressed? Borderline? Or ADHD?  Broken? All of this contaminates the Work you do. Their words will talk in your head, essentially suggesting you stuff it all back in the box.

Anticipate resistance from others and get prepared to set boundaries.  Find a statement that can be your mantra. Effective mantras are simple statements embodied in self-Love. For instance, “I want freedom from my past.” The Serenity Prayer may be something that works for you.